Why autistic people are more susceptible to gaslighting

Autistic people are more susceptible to gaslighting and I want to talk about why. 

Specifically, what it has to do with our brain wiring...

Many of us are "bottom-up processors."

This means that before we decide how to interpret information being presented to us, we first assess how it fits into our existing knowledge and understanding of the world.

This also means that if something is confusing us, we won't automatically ignore the information. We'll first try to understand what the information means. 

So, we ask ourselves a few questions (this happens instantaneously, and usually subconsciously)...

1. Does it conflict with our existing reality?

2. Does it fit, and if so, where?

3. Does the new information not conflict, but also not fit perfectly... yet sound plausible enough for us to reconsider our known truths so we can integrate it into our existing knowledge set?

If the answer to the first question is a clear yes... that it conflicts with our existing reality.... then we'll often dismiss it and move along.

If it's not a clear yes, we'll go to question 2. 

Does it fit, and if so, where?

If THAT answer is a clear yes, we accept the new information and integrate it into our mental schema.

(In this situation, many of us will even be thrilled that we've learned something new.  )

But where many of us get tripped up is when we get to question 3...

Where we feel the new information sounds plausible enough not to instantly dismiss it... but it doesn't fit cleanly into our existing mental map of the world.

I talked a bit about this in my last post when I was breaking down the reason autistic people struggle with multiple choice questions.

But in this post, I want to talk about how it makes autistic people more vulnerable and more susceptible to gaslighting...

Because I think it's an extremely important topic that very few people are talking about. 

(And, unfortunately, this topic hits close to home for me because I have had personal, and extremely disturbing experiences with romantic gaslighting.)

So, in a gaslighting scenario, person A (the manipulator) is trying to convince person B (the victim) to question their own perceptions. 

And they use very intentional and psychologically manipulative tactics to do so.

These tactics often use grains of truth as a starting point and then construct an entirely different and distorted reality around those truths.

But by the time the reconstruction is complete, the full picture is no longer reality. It's a complete distortion of it.

Now, the reason gaslighting often trips up bottom-up processors is that many, (if not most) bottom-up processors are also exceptionally good at pattern recognition. 

Which is also a widely recognized autistic skill.

So, when a person attempts to gaslight us, we start our 3 question process... 

1. Does what they're saying conflict with what we know to be true?

"Hmm, not necessarily. Ok..."

2. Does it neatly and easily fit into our existing reality?

"Hmm, definitely not that either..."

3. Does it sound plausible? "Maybe??" And if so, how can we rethink and refine our understanding of the world to find room for it?

And THIS is where we get stuck.

Because as we are looking at all the information we currently hold in our minds... our brains are scanning for patterns that can help us understand the new information. 

In nanoseconds, we begin to spot the grains of truth hidden within the distortions... 

And this stops us in our tracks. 

We quickly realize that we can't cleanly disregard the information as false. 

So we begin to re-evaluate and re-assess the new information trying to map it to our existing reality.

And this cycle often continues over and over as we try to reach a conclusion that makes sense to us.

But gaslighting is actually more complex and far more insidious than the description I just gave makes it seem.

Because, in most cases where gaslighting is involved, the distorted reality doesn't just have one grain of truth within it. It has hundreds. If not thousands. 

And, in many, if not most cases of gaslighting, the perpetrator is intentionally pointing to every grain of truth they can, with the explicit intention of overwhelming and confusing their victim.

There's actually a term for this. It originated in the context of politics, but has since been used when discussing and understanding psychologically and emotionally abusive relationships...

It's called "flooding." 

The idea is that the manipulator will "flood" their victim with a high volume of information to overwhelm and confuse them.

This makes it extremely difficult (if not impossible) for the victim to distinguish between reality and what the manipulator wants them to believe. 

So, when a bottom up processor is being flooded with information that's rooted in enough truth to push them into analysis mode... their brain kicks into overdrive, desperately trying to make sense of the flood of information...

And in many cases, this leads to the brain getting completely overwhelmed, confused, and just... shutting down. 

Kind of like what happens when a computer overheats.

It's not that the person has found coherence in the distortions. It's that they no longer have energy to continue looking for the truth. So they stop.

Exhausted.

Beaten down. 

Traumatized. 

And now, extremely easy to continue manipulating. 

This is the sad reality many autistic people face (especially high masking, lower support needs autistic people).

And I don't think enough people realize just how significant the connection between autism and (successful) psychological abuse is. 

And I believe that if more people understood this correlation, the better positioned society would be to help autistic DV victims.

If you take anything away from this post, let it be this...

The stakes are high. 

Education and awareness can help.